Genesis chapter 7. Years ago, there was a grizzly
bear that was born. They live about 20-25 years.
It was born in captivity. It was at a zoo. And every morning,
that grizzly bear woke up, and it would walk to the south side
of that fence, and it would pace back and forth along the fence
about 50 feet. And it walked back and forth,
and it walked back and forth. And about 15 years later, its
whole life, The majority of its life, it walked that same path
every morning on the south side of that fence. A rich man saw
that bear and had compassion on that bear and said, I feel
sorry for that bear. That ain't good for that bear
to be in here. And he bought a nature preserve. And he put
electric fences up, had several hundred acres. And that bear
to run free, it had liberty. He bought the bear and he bought
the land. Gave the bear all this property to go run on. And that
bear woke up every morning, it walked about 50 feet south, and
it paced back and forth 50 feet in a straight line. Grave clothes. That's what that
is. Grave clothes. It's free. But
it's grave clothes. And it's my instinct. with people
to go take a rod and whip them and say, get off that path. Take
a couple more steps. Go this way. Go that way. Would
I want to go up and whip a bear? Take a belt to a grizzly bear?
Big 800 pound bear? Don't want to do that, do you?
Why would I get frustrated with that bear? I saw the video of
that bear pacing in the middle of an open field and that broke
my heart. I felt so sorry for that bear. Liberty is an odd
thing. God has to give it. He has to
give the liberty. He has to call His child. He
has to purchase them. He has to put their feet where
He wants them. And as He sees fit, He teaches His child. He's
going to do it one way. He's going to call His children
out and He's going to teach His children through His voice. He's going to speak to them.
I pray this morning God will speak to somebody. David Edmondson
wrote that recently in a bulletin. He said, God's preacher does
not care about losing his congregation. He cares about the lost in his
congregation. If somebody's hungry, if their
ears are dying to hear a word, you'll get over the motorcycles
going up and down the road. You'll get over these lights
so bright and the echoes of somebody walking upstairs and you'll hear
him. He sees fit to speak to you. That's what will happen.
For 120 years, we've been looking at this chapter for a while.
I'm going to spin this around. I'll talk loud. 120 years, God
used Noah to preach righteousness among a wicked generation. That's
a general call went out. Man's wicked. God's going to
punish sin. He's provided an ark. Get in
it. Come to Him. Come to Him. Christ is that ark. He didn't
just talk about a big wooden boat. He preached Christ to them.
Scriptures say so. He preached righteousness. Christ
is righteous and you can go in this boat and not physically
die and the whole time we're going to talk about how the Lord
drew us into Christ and we lived. People didn't want to... You're
nuts. There's a new path for around that heart so people can
go the long way so they don't have to hear Noah. That man's
bugging me to death. That's a long time he's been
preaching. I'm sick of it. Made fun of him. Picked at him. A
general call went out for 120 years. And then God effectually
called one of his children. Effectually. And let us see it.
Look here. Genesis 7 verse 1. And the Lord said unto Noah,
Come thou and all thy house into the ark, for thee have I seen
righteous before me in this generation." In this wicked, corrupt generation,
he's about to drown every one of them. He speaks to Noah. He
says, Come into the ark, Noah. You're righteous. I've seen it. And the way God sees things is
the way things are. People say, why ain't that bad?
He says different. And what He says is right. And
when the Lord says His child, He speaks to them personally.
Says, come to Christ. You're righteous. You're holy. I can't understand that. Faith
believes what it doesn't understand. And intellectualism tries to
understand what it don't really believe. I start from Greg Elmquist. That's in his bulletin this week
too. There's been a lot of good bulletins. That's the truth, isn't it? I've been amazed by this verse.
I've dwelt on it for over a week now. And I'm just amazed. It's
awesome. It inspires awe. And if we're
unable to have our eyes open, if the Lord will open our ears
and give us hearts to understand this, this is easy to understand.
It's easy to understand. It ain't complicated, but it's
impossible to measure. We can understand it, but we
can't fathom the depths of it. The Lord, capital L, capital
O, capital R, capital D. I'm going to say this over and
over until it starts hitting with us and we'll remember. Lord
Jehovah, the Lord of hosts, the self-existent One, the triune
God, spoke to Noah, a sinner, You want to hear about that?
I want to hear about that. The Lord gave Noah a command.
This general call had went out for 120 years and effectually
the Lord spoke to him individually and he said, come thou and all
thy house into the ark. And then the Lord gave the reason,
the cause for him to speak to a sinner. And the reason Noah
could enter that ark, he had the right to enter that ark.
For thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation."
God said Noah was righteous. You're holy, Noah. That's the
reason you can come into this ark. This is the Holy God, the
Almighty, who it's written in Habakkuk. Thou art pure eyes
than to behold evil. Thou canst not look on iniquity.
The Lord can't even look on it. If He speaks to anything, He's
either saying, come to Christ, you're holy, you're right, be
in my presence, or depart from me, I know you're not. That's
the only two ways He speaks, isn't it? This was a sinner born
of Adam, just like me and just like you. And that's hope for
the hopeless. God spoke to Noah. He saved Noah,
put him in Christ, made him righteous. That gives me hope. That gives
me hope. Maybe the Lord will speak to
somebody today. Maybe He'll go into their hearts, look on them
in mercy and be gracious to them and speak to them because He's
found them righteous, found them holy. I ask myself, and I want
you to ask yourself, has the Lord spoken to me? Has the Lord
spoken to you? It's a question every sinner
should ask. Every person that walks up and
down these roads, that drives in this city, that flies over
our heads, or tunnels underneath us, ought to ask the question,
has God spoke to me? But only a sinner that's been
regenerated. Only one that God's put a new heart in, by the grace
of God, will ask that. Why? Because they're the only
ones that's been given a heart to care. They're the only ones that care. Has
the Lord spoken to me? Who does the Lord speak to? He
does speak, doesn't He? Turn over to Exodus 33. Exodus
33 verse 18. Moses is speaking here in verse
18. And he said, I beseech thee, show me thy glory. Lord, let
me see your glory. And the Lord said, He spoke,
I will make all of my goodness pass before thee. I'm going to
have grace that goes before grace, Moses. And I will proclaim. That means I'm going to speak
and I'm going to continue to speak. the name of the Lord before
thee. And I will be gracious to whom
I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on whom I will show
mercy." And then you know what he did to show his glory? He
put Moses in the cleft of the rock. You want to see my glory,
Moses? I'm going to put you in Christ.
But he speaks to him. I've got some scriptures that
give a center answer to this question, has the Lord spoken
to me? I know he does speak. Our Lord said in John 10, My
sheep hear My voice. They hear My voice. And when
I read that, you know what I think? I want to hear. I've heard You, Lord, and I want
to hear You. I don't want to just listen to
a word from the Lord. I want to hear it. I want to
be the only one he's speaking to. Just like Noah. I want to
be one on one. I can be in a crowd of 10,000
people. I don't care. Shopping carts
bumping into my legs. I don't care. I want to hear.
I want to hear your voice. And I know he speaks and I know
that he's always heard of those he's pleased to speak to in power.
Those that he speaks to effectually, he is heard of them. They hear
him. He said, my sheep hear my voice.
There were thousands and thousands of people, human beings, on this
earth that Christ's voice went into their physical ear. He preached
to them. They heard His words. They heard
Him preach. They heard Him laugh. They heard
Him cry. But there were some, by God's
grace, that heard the Lord with a spiritual ear. They heard Him. They saw not
just a man, but they saw the God-man. They heard not just
a man speak, not just an uncomely son of a carpenter speak. They
heard God in human flesh speak to their hearts. It happens. It happened then and it's happening
now. God speaks to His people and they hear Him. Are they just
paying closer attention than other people? Are they more diligent
than other people? Is that why He speaks to them?
Solomon. The Lord said, A born of Adam,
this is the wisest man that ever walked the earth. He said, The
hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord hath made even both
of them. I saw some things. The Lord showed it to me. He
gave you eyes to see. I heard some things. He opened
your ears. Gave you ears to hear. He's the one that did it. I know
the Lord does speak. And I know that when He speaks
to one of His sheep, they hear Him. And I know there's a response
to that. It's in idle words. It's not
ignored. It can't be. It's God who speaks. They obey. They follow Him. He
said, My sheep hear My voice. I know them. And they follow
Me. That new man in them, that new
creation, they hear Christ. They hear Him in His Word. We hear Him. We hear Him in the
preaching of the Gospel. And they obey it. They obey it. They follow Him. The Lord spoke
to Abraham. Now the Lord said unto Abram,
Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy
father's house unto a land that I will show thee. God spoke to
Abraham. And Abraham obeyed. Why? God
gave him the power to obey, didn't He? Gave him ears to hear His
voice. Gave him a heart to love Him.
Want to be obedient. God spoke to Moses at that burning
bush. And it says, And when the Lord saw that he turned aside
to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush and
said, Moses, Moses. And Moses said, Here am I. What's that mean? I've got a
lot on that. Here am I. Here I am. Here's the whole of
me. Lord, use me as you see fit.
However that may be, you're right. That's utter submission. People
say, I'm over here. That ain't what that means. From
the heart of a believer that the Lord put a new heart in,
that's here's the whole of me. Here I am. He spoke to Samuel. Mary called Samuel in the middle
of the night. Samuel didn't know what that was. He kept going
to Eli. Eli, are you calling for me?
Oh, son. No, I ain't. Thank God He gave
him Eli to speak to him, didn't He? He said, next time you hear
that voice, He said, Lord, your servant's here. That's God speaking
to you. And the Lord came and stood and
called as of the time, Samuel, Samuel, called him by name. And
Samuel answered, Speak, for thy servant heareth. Lord, I hear
you. You've spoken to me. Keep speaking
to me. And I'm your servant. Isaiah said, Also I heard the
voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send and whom shall go
forth? And said, I, here am I. Send me. Just like Timothy. Timothy had
a hold on some liberty and freedom. He said, Lord, that's fine. Circumcise
me. I'll go. Use me. Here I am. God speaks. It's recorded
many times in the Scriptures that sons heard His voice with
the physical ear. Our Lord's baptism. That general
call went out. He said, This is my son in whom
I'm well pleased. That's the gospel right there,
buddy. How are we going to please God? It's going to be in Christ.
It's going to be in Him. And then that effectual call
went out on that Mount of Transfiguration. Those apostles sitting there
said, this is my Son in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye Him. He speaks. Hear Him. That's a
command, isn't it? I've never heard the Lord with
my natural ears speaking. People have. In Paul's last one,
the Lord spoke out loud to His children. He spoke out loud at
that baptism. He spoke out loud on that Mount
of Transfiguration. He gave a law on Sidon. People
ran. Moses, you talk to Him. I don't want to talk to Him.
He doesn't speak audibly anymore. And don't let someone tell you
that they've heard Him. Someone said, Lord spoke to me, and you
know what he said? I said, I don't want to know. I'm getting out
of here. You run. But his child hears
him through his word. He hears him through the preaching
of the gospel. And those sheep hear his voice
through that, and they know him, and they follow him. If God's
going to be merciful to a poor, wretched sinner, he's going to
speak to them through his word, and he'll speak to them in particular.
He's going to speak to them personally. Ain't nobody else going, why
would so and so would have heard that? Why would I have heard
it? That's a sure sign I didn't hear it. I think somebody else
ought to hear it. I got to hear it first. He calls
them particularly, he called Zacchaeus, we just looked at
that. Zacchaeus, come down. Saul, Saul, why persecute thou
me? Saul didn't persecute him personally,
did he? No, he did his people and he's one with them. That's
why he's teaching Saul and turning him into Paul. The objects of
his mercy will miraculously hear what the natural ear cannot hear. What do believers listen for?
Those that the Lord speaks to, what do we listen for? Every
time a gospel is preached, believers hear that truth set forth one
more time. The believers listen to hear
the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Listen for His honor to be exalted,
for Him to be lifted up. Listen one more time. Tell me
that old old story. Tell me one more time. Salvation
is all of grace. I don't have a hand in it. That's
what I want to hear. When God, who God is and what
He's done for His people, The truth of Him. The finished work. Who He is, what He made us. The
believer hears that and says, that's a voice I know. I know
that voice. That's Him. That's who it is.
And we don't get tired of it. So I know people that got tired
of it. Child of God don't get tired of it. Those that love
Him, because He first loved them, they don't get tired of hearing
it. I wonder how many times Kimberly said my name. A lot. It's been a while, hasn't it?
There was a time we couldn't talk. I couldn't talk to her,
and I thought, well, if I could just hear her say something one
more time. She could say my name, say the children's name, say
something else. I don't care what she said. I want to hear it. And
I thought of those that's lost loved ones, they've lost spouses,
they've lost a child, and how precious it would be to hear
them speak to them one more time. And it wouldn't matter even if
it was a phrase they'd said a million times. I want to hear them speak,
because who's speaking in them? Does the Lord speak to His children?
Yes, He does. Can I know if the Lord has spoken
to me? Yes, I can. You can too. He says in Genesis
7 verse 1, And the Lord saith unto Noah, Come thou and all
thy house into the ark. That's the voice. We've been
looking at this ark for a few weeks now, and it's a glorious
picture of our Lord Jesus Christ. Pitched within and without. Sealed,
that door's sealed. One lock, one window. Room for
all. And the water's a wrap. Beat
it. And beat it. And beat it. And everyone inside
didn't get a drop of water on them. That's Christ. If Almighty
God has spoken to you by His Spirit in your heart, here's
what He says. Come to the ark. Come to Him
that is the Ark. Come to Him that is rest, that
is security. Come to Him. He is your only
hope of life. Come, you and all your house,
everybody born just the way you're born, all your brothers and sisters,
all your children, all your grandparents, that has the same new man birth
in them, come to the Ark. Come to Christ the Ark. Not come
to a carnal natural man. Not come to a pulpit. When I
was a kid, I always thought a pulpit means pulling you into a pit.
That's what most of them do, isn't it? Don't walk down an
aisle. Not to your works. Not to your
prefab prayers. Just recite this. Here's what
everybody else said. You say the same thing. No! Hogwash! If God speaks, He says,
come to Christ. Come to the work that's already
finished. We just looked at the provisions too, didn't we? It's
fully provided for. Everything's done. Come to Him.
Turn over to John chapter 6. The child of God says in their
heart, whenever He says, Come, they say, Lord, I come. Here
I am. Here am I. I come. The first
time they're spoken to in power, they say, Lord, I come. And every
other time they're spoken to, Lord, I come. I come. It says in John 6, 37, all that the Father giveth me
shall Come to Me." It's a fectual call that goes out. When He says,
come, they shall come to Him. Come to Christ. To Me, He says.
And Him that cometh. You know the ETH, don't you?
To Me, I will know I was cast out. You shall come to Christ. You're going to come to Him in
that first hour, and then you're going to come to Him in that
second hour, and however many hours He gives you. That's the
only place we come. We come to Him continually, don't
we? Look down at verse 44, John 6, verse 44. No man can come
to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him, and I
will raise him up at the last day. Do you see the parallels
there? God spoke to Noah in particular and said, Come. And the Lord
said, The Father which sent Me will draw him, and I will raise
him up at the last day. What happened to Noah and his
family that went into that ark? It was raised up? That ark floated. It wasn't a submarine. Raised
up. Verse 45, as it is written in
the prophets, they all shall be taught of God. Every man therefore
that hath heard and hath learned of the Father cometh unto me. There ain't no other way. He's
the way. If God's taught you, if He's gave you a mind that
He's taught and He's learned you, as we said when I was growing
up, you come to Christ. Not that any man hath seen the
Father, because that's all going to be through hearing, isn't
it? Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is
of God, he hath seen the Father. It's going to be by hearing.
Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Verse 47,
Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me hath
everlasting life. Those that God speaks to effectually
and brings them to Christ, you have. You have had it. It's everlasting. People can't
get their heads around that. We can't either. It's been from
forever. It is right now and it shall
be forever. Life in Him. Life in Him. Lord, I come now. I'm thankful
you've given me an ear to hear your word and a heart that believes
you and wants to come to Christ and to flee from everything else. Knowing and winning that ark,
they left everything of this world behind. All their thoughts,
all their religion, all their nonsense. I was reading Isaiah
1 this morning. The Lord don't have tolerance
for that. He said, you stretch out your hands and you have your
many prayers, many long worthy prayers and stuff. And He said,
I don't care for it. I won't have it. He said, wash
ye and be ye clean. There's a command to it. He told
them. I don't want anything else when
I flee from it. I don't need anything else in
this world. I need Him. Paul wrote to us
and said, But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, of whom God has
made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption,
that, according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory
in the Lord. I need wisdom. He's my wisdom.
I need righteousness. He's the Lord our righteousness.
I need sanctification. I need to be set apart. I need
to be made holy. I need to be put aside for His use. It's Him. It's in Him. And I need redemption. He is our redemption. Those who
have heard His voice, His Christ, they cannot and will not tolerate
another gospel. That's not another gospel. That's
not another God. They can't stand to hear it.
I can't stand to hear it. You turn the radio on and it
says, I can't stand somebody down talking bad about my children.
Watch how long I stay polite and nice. It will turn south
pretty quick, isn't it? The child of God can't stand
to hear another gospel. It's not another. It's vastly different,
isn't it? While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed
them. And behold, a voice came out
of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I
am well pleased. Hear ye Him. Not hear anything
you can get your hands on. Don't try to go Don't ever try
to go, I'm going to see if I can find some bad things. No, leave
it. The Lord gave you good food.
Don't go digging for worms. You'll find some. You may end
up liking a taste of worms. Leave it be. Leave it alone. He said, hear ye Him. God spoke,
so hear ye Him. If you've heard the voice, there's
no other subject or message that'll do. I don't want to hear it. I've got a message on finances
this week. I can hire somebody for that. I've got a message
on raising your children. I wear a belt. I've got that
down pat. That's pretty easy. It ain't complicated. I want
to hear Him. The voice of God has one message. The Lord Jesus
Christ. The voice of the Holy Ghost has
one message. It has one thing to say. The glory of Christ. It says in John 16, How be it
when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into
all truth. For he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he
shall hear, that he shall speak, and he will show you things to
come. He shall glorify me. What's coming? People are just
wringing their hands and worrying themselves to death. Let's read
Revelations. What's going on? What happened
in China this week? Let me tell you what's coming.
Christ is going to be glorified. Do you need to hear anything
else? Button like a goat and bow. That's
who He is. He's going to be glorified. That's
what the Holy Spirit speaks. If the Lord's effectively called
you in power and truth, He will not leave you nor forsake you.
If He sent the Holy Ghost to you to speak to you, convince
you of your sin, convince you of Christ's righteousness, and
that all judgment's done, all the work's done, all the preparation's
done, if He spoke to you, it ain't going to stop. You understand
that? He says in John 14, 16, and I
pray the Father, this is Christ speaking, and he shall give you
another comforter, because Christ is our comforter while he was
here, that he may abide with you forever. It comes and goes. Maybe in our mind, our feeble,
weak mind, but he said the comforter is with you always. Lo, I am
with you always, because they're one and the same, ain't they?
I don't feel blessed." Well, you are. No matter how you feel,
feelings come and feelings go too, isn't it? The blessings
of God, the gifts of God are without repentance. They don't
turn. They don't change. Any message you hear that's not
concerning the glory of God and the salvation of His elect, that
it's all of grace, it's all of the ability and power of God
saving His people, it's not the voice of God. The comforter speaks of Christ. That's who He speaks of. There's
a lot of people who say, God spoke to me. If He's not speaking
of His sovereign grace to sinners through His precious Son, God
didn't speak to you. I tried real hard to make that
more plain. I don't know how to. You will
hear His voice in the gospel. You will hear it in power. And
His voice always draws sinners to the finished work of Christ.
Never to themselves. Never to... Well, you know what?
Now, okay. Well, God saved you. Now you've got to get yourself
holy. God didn't say that. He didn't say it. Man might spoke
that. Man speaks it all the time. It's
like venom coming out of their mouth, don't they? You better
do something. You better straighten up. Now, if God speaks to you,
you'll want to. You have a heart that wants to.
Finally, if the Lord speaks to you in mercy, He will call you
continually to Christ and He will reveal to you that He's
fully satisfied with you in His Son. It says in Genesis 7 verse
1, back in our text. Genesis 7, 1. And the Lord said unto Noah,
Come thou and all thy house into the ark, for thee, here's the
reason, have I seen righteous before me in this generation.
Righteous. Righteous. Righteousness. To
a person born of Adam, that the Scriptures say there's none righteous,
no, not one. That's what the Scriptures tell
us, isn't it? Children of Adam, ain't nobody righteous, no, not
one. He said back in chapter 6, And God saw the weakness of
man was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. He don't lie. That's the truth, isn't it? You
that know Him, you know something about that. God's true, isn't
He? I know my thoughts. You don't.
I live inside of this head. He ain't lying. He's telling
the truth. That will come first. That's true conviction of sin.
They were fiber in me and I drank iniquity like water and I don't
even know I'm drinking it. I have unbelief. That's in that
article in the bulletin today. Brother Greg wrote that too.
That's outstanding. The only sin that our eyes and
our minds can't discern is unbelief. It's unconscionable to us. We
can't enter into that. The Lord convicts us of that.
Lord, I didn't believe you of sin, of what I am, what I deserve.
And that old man does not go away until this body of death
passes. And it's a weight and it's a burden and there's a war
going on in us. But God spoke to Noah and his
children. He said, I see you righteous,
holy, unreprovable, without blame, before Him in love. That's the only way you will
be before Him. How? How? That's the most important
question. That's the essence of the gospel.
How? How can that be? We know Noah
is going to lay up drunk here in two more chapters, isn't he?
We know he's a child of Adam. We know what he is. How can he
be righteous before a holy God? How can he come into the presence
of a holy God that can't look on sin, that can't look on iniquity,
can't even be around Him at all? How? That's the heart of the
gospel we preach. Job said, I know it is so of
a truth. I know it. I believe it. But
how should a man be just with God? That's a question of questions. I know something of what I am
in part. I know something in part of God's holiness. But how
can a man be righteous before Him? A person who in themselves
drinks iniquity like water. From the sole of the foot even
to the head, there is no soundness in it but wounds and bruises
and putrefying sores." How can that be holy before God? How
is it possible for the child of Adam to be righteous in His
sight? And He sees things as they actually are. This wasn't
pretend. He said, no, you're righteous.
He says to His people that He speaks to, you're holy. I don't
understand that, but I believe. That's right, isn't it? Christ told his disciples, for
it's easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for
a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. And they that heard it
said, who then can be saved? Who can be righteous before God? And he said, the things which
are impossible with men are possible with God. That ought to knock
out every self-righteous act and thought that man ever had.
Why I think I can, it's impossible with man. Man's going to be saved,
God's going to do it. Has to be all of him. How can
man be just before God? Justified. We know what that
means, don't we? Innocent. That means the law
looked at you. There's a lot of court cases
going on around this nation right now. It's all over TV and, boy,
people's got opinion, don't they? The law looks at a person and
says, innocent. That's justified. They really
did some stuff. They did some bad stuff. The
law says innocent. And there's protests all over
this nation. Because the law spoke. God justified
me in his son. Made me holy, unreprovable, perfect
in love and his sight. People get mad at that. They
protest it, don't they? Man, to protest anything. How
can it be possible? Who then can be saved? Man, it's
impossible. Turn over to Romans 3 and I'll
let you go. Romans chapter 3. Romans 3 verse 24. It says, being justified. So it
means the law looked on His people and said, innocent. You did right. Being justified, how? Freely. By His grace through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus. Where's that redemption at? In
that ark, in Christ. Who God has set forth to be a
propitiation, a mercy seat, a bloody acceptable sacrifice. That means
He's satisfied. He set it forth. He sent Him.
He's a propitiation that God's satisfied with. He provided Himself
a land. And God has set forth to be a
propitiation through faith in His blood to declare His righteousness
for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance
of God. To declare, I say at this time,
His righteousness that He might be just and the justifier of
him which believeth in Jesus. For Noah to be just before God,
for any sinner to be just before a holy God, their guilt must
be taken care of. Sin is going to have to be dealt
with. And if the law declares me not
guilty, what happened to that sin? Christ washed His disciples'
feet, didn't He? He took His robe and took the dirt off of
them and then He did away with the robe. That's redemption. It says, for
He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might
be made the righteousness of God in Him. When you boil it down, the issue
is not what we do, it's what we are. Sin ain't what you do, it's a
result of what you are. Being in God's presence isn't
a result of what you do, it's a result of what you are. God
made His Son what we are. He made Him sin. And He made
us His righteousness. He made Noah righteous. Well,
Christ hadn't come yet. Well, we need to learn something
about the power of God's Word, don't we? It hadn't come to fruition
yet. You take it to the bank. Noah
was righteous right then when God said to him. The mercy and
compassion of God is that for His people, He made Christ's
sin, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. How holy is God? I can't describe
that. I can't put it into words. I
see it in part. We understand something of it,
but we see it in part, don't we? But I know this. When the
Father saw Christ made His people, the Father forsook Him. He forsook Him. He cried out,
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? God turned His back
on God. What a thought! Who can enter
into something like that? The debt we owe to the law must be
paid for. Sin must be dealt with. And that
sinner must be as righteous and as holy as Christ Himself to
enter into the presence of the Lord. They must be made holy. And in Christ, In Him, by His
doing, the believer is. Those that He speaks to, those
that He calls affectionately. His electing call of grace, He
comes and speaks to individually. Tells them to come to Christ.
Says, you're righteous. They are. They are. There in
our text, Genesis 7, verse 1, And the Lord said unto Noah,
Come thou and all thy house into the ark, for thee have I seen
righteous before me in this generation. Oh, for the Lord be merciful
to me. He be merciful to you. And look upon us in His Son,
being one with Him. What a blessing. Nothing else
matters. Nothing else matters. If we're concerned about something
else, that's blessed. That's all there is to it. That's a
one thing needful. He's the one thing needful. If
you find yourself interested in that, God seeing you righteous, seeing
you acceptable. That gets a hold of you. Here's
what the Lord said, Come unto me, all you that labor and are
heavy laden, because you're working yourself to the bone, and you're
burdened down with a whole lot of burdens. Come unto me, all
you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. I pray the Lord speak to somebody
today. Speak to every one of us.